Getting it in preflop with AK

Over the past months, I have sporadically checked how my AK fares in terms of preflop all-ins, and its atrocious performance has lead me to doubt the concept of stacking off with it.

Check out these graphs, they are filtered for NL100+, between 3 and 6 players at the table and preflop all-ins. Note that all-ins that are not called are part of this graph. So everytime I shove and produce a fold, this graph improves.

AKo/AKs (all-in, 6max) = -21.7 stacks / -15 Big Blinds per Shove


QQ (all-in, 6max) = +0.8 stacks / +1.4 Big Blinds per Shove


JJ (all-in, 6max) = -2.9 stacks / -6 Big Blinds per Shove


These all-ins were played over a total sample size of 194,000 hands. The AK graph has such a pronouncedly downward pointing trend that I find it hard to believe it's just a swing.
Can one of you math wizzes elaborate or point me towards a discussion concerning stacking off with AK?

lol I was just discussing this last night. I said that I thought people stacked AK too much in 6max and that in most cases flatting the 3-bet was far superior to 4-betting and getting it in. I said that against someone with a lot of history or a bvb or button vs. blind where your opponent makes a ton of moves that I still 4-bet AK for value, but that if he just 3-bets a normal ammount I would flat especially if I'm in position. Reasoning is that against 99% of the people (at least that I've played with, no idea how it is at 400nl+ 6max), if your all-in is called you are NEVER ahead. No one calls preflop shoves with AQ at least at 200nl. Basically your shove folds out hands you beat and gets calls from hands that beat you and some that flip (AK/QQ/maybe JJ). Meanwhile if you flat, if you hit an A you could stack AQ/AJ or if not stack extract a lot more money postflop. Stacking a K will make a good amount more off KQ if not a stack. The point is these are the hands that put in 0 more money preflop but certain opponents may stack off with it because they hit top pair in a 3-bet pot.

That said I'm absolutely shocked at your graph. Although I think flatting is superior in many cases, I really can't believe it's costing you an average of 15 big blinds per shove. Although honestly I'd like to see it filtered to pots where there is a 4-bet or all-in. Say you raise, get 3-bet, 4-bet to w/e you 4-bet to (I'm not thinking you 4-bet shove a ton) and they fold. You're getting like 10-14 big blinds right there depending on your raise size and their 3-bet size meanwhile there's never an all-in. The 4-bet is what prices you in too. If you 4-bet to like 30 big blinds, AK still has odds to call a shove from a range of KK+/AK. But when stacks do go in you only have 38% equity.

So I think that's most likely the problem, check out 4-bet pots because by that time you're mostly committed and since your opponent knows that you should get a lot of folds from 4-bets that will probably make AK positive for you, but as I said in certain situations I believe flatting AK to 3-bets in position can be much more profitable than 4-betting it against most opponents in 6max. Obviously if they're 3-betting like 15% I just raise and get it in but against a standard 3-bet percentage of like 5-8% I would experiment flatting more, although I haven't played a ton of 6max in the last few months and haven't tested this theory at all so it could be completely off.

You make some very good points there. I can't filter for 4-bets, so I don't know how much profit it makes me. One thing is clear though: AKo/AKs is obviously a winning hand including preflop, I'm really only looking at all-in situations here.

The reason why it surprised me is because QQ is breaking even albeit over a smaller sample. One would think that those hands have roughly the same equity. But just today somebody shoved 77 over my squeeze for 150BB, I had AK and lost a flip. QQ would have had him crushed.
The point being: people seem to more often stack off with JJ, TT and sometimes even smaller pairs than they do with AQ or AJ (AJ just about never apart from donkeys). If you have a big pair, you have them crushed. If you have AK, you're still flipping.

As far as being committed after 4-betting is concerned, you're right. 4-bet/folding is completely out of the question.
The way I've been playing JJ is as follows: I usually 4-bet them myself and call it off if shoved on. But if somebody else 4-bets me, I tend to fold them (obv. a little player-/situation-dependent). I wonder whether a similar strategy might make sense with AK. 3-bet/folding it might just be more profitable (or cost less) than 3-bet/shoving it.

You make a pretty good point about hands like 77. Hadn't even thought of that, but yeah if someone thinks you're full of shit they can shove on you with lots of pairs. Rarely are they shoving AJ and probably not even AQ as much. Not to mention the fish that over-value pairs. I'll have to think about the 3-bet fold line but I think against guys where that line is profitable it's probably better to just flat especially in position. oop it gets kinda tricky but either way you figure to extract some pretty good value from AQ/AJ when an A flops and they figure you'll 3-bet with AK so they basically have as good as TPTK. Of course when I try that their A7 always hits 2 pair.

If you plan to 3bet/fold, then I think flatting is probably better.

Also, when I filter my database for AK that I 4bet or more, I'm a 1.5 BB/hand winner, but it's only a over 66 samples out of 130k hands, and my highest stakes correspond to your smallest.

Something I've thought about for a while. I can't see how we can filter the hands in HEM to 'all in pf' AND '4bet with no AIPF'. I'm gonna ask my coach the stats master about this, I'm sure he'll clear it all up for us.

I'm guessing here, but i would postulate that oop, flatting AK and donking 3 barrels blindly would be profitable. There may better lines if you open your eyes, though.

Well, 4-bets don't happen all that often, and I'd rather play a 3-bet pot than a single raise pot. Sometimes flatting is fine, but I'm not so sure about making it a default.

I don't turn my hand into a bluff just because I 3-bet/fold. When villain 4-bets, he's letting me know that he has the very top of his range, so folding everything but the very top of my own range is fine. The only question being: does AK really not count towards the very top of my range when just about every 6-max player out there insta-stacks it?

Here's mine since 1/1/08. 112K hands mostly FR. Filtered AKo & AKs, mostly 25NL (but some 50NL & 10NL), and all-in preflop. Note my +345 ptBB run over the last 50 occurrences.

AKaipfGrph.jpg (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=16097&d=1230582557)

Does FR vs 6-max really make that big of a difference here?

absolutely. at 6max it can be so standard to jam like ATs+ BTN vs BB with the right image, so jamming with AK is definitely a lot more standard at 6max, because at full-ring, no one ever has AQ, etc. when they get it in preflop, unless there is some type of history or the guy is trying to get a fold

Uh, now wait at second. MY graph is 6-max and his is full ring. This is strange.

You have 340 all-ins over 112K hands and I have 145 over 190K hands? I'm confused now

Just so we can compare: how often did you get dealt AKo/AKs?

I got it dealt: 2380 times of which I shoved preflop 148 times.
Out of these 148 times, 105 times the hand went to showdown.

I have a hard time believing you'd get more opportunities to shove AK at full ring than I do at 6-max.

Crap. That was everything BUT AKs/AKo. Sorry. In the HEM holecards filter, Light Blue is OFF and Yellow is ON. I had it backwards. Sorry, my bad.

Here's the correct one:

AKaipfGrph.jpg (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=16101&d=1230589647)

EDIT: --FYI: All 66 went to showdown.

Ah, okay, that's much more in line with what I would expect. Of course, your graph is looking much better, so maybe my AK performance is variance after all? Hmm..

I would expect this when it's all-in preflop .

Anyway a few questions. You get 3-bet with AK by an average player, you looking to get it all-in? What conditions would incline you to do so or not? Also do you just 4-bet shove? This would make your graph make a ton of sense because then it counts the times your 4-bets get folds (because you shoved) while Chris's don't.

Although you can't remove the range variance you could simply check the ev-adjusted rather than total money won since you're discussing hands where the money's shipped preflop. At least that evens out the variance in the cards coming out.

This month at 200nl FR. Finally something I'm actually running good in .

Attached Images

AKAIPF.jpg (73.4 KB, 22 views)

JESUS H CHRIST.

Unless I am filtering this insanely wrong I am playing a very very different game than ye guys are. Exactly how are ye filtering it ?

I never seem to have much luck with AK suited or otherwise.

Maybe I am not playing them correctly. Not sure.

mange

Full ring -micros


6max micros



Still making a pretty good profit with ak/aks, just not when the money goes in preflop. Possibly some spots where I shouldn't have gotten the money in. Rake is kind of gross though down here. If i get in 100bb's preflop with AK at 25nl and win, 10% of my profits are being raked.

I go 3rd-level and figure out if he thinks I'm stealing too much, etc. Plus I seem to get it in against quite a few half or short stackers since I often percieve them to have a wider range.
Again, I didn't get any folds. Also, stack size comes into play again. The 4th-bet would get a smaller stack all-in anyway. Plus I usually 4-bet shove VS multiple opps who I read as "loose".

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Hmmm. After thinking a bit here, I guess I like to get short stacks all-in with my AK a lot. Ya think? That might skew my graph a bit.

well this one time i was playing online. i had AK and this other dude 3 betted so of course i called. the flop was 3 8 K. so i figured wow, no way can i lose this, pushed all in, next two cards were 6 and 10. i lost. he had bullets lol just my luck

I'm in the middle of watching BalugaWhale's second Ghost video on deucescracked, and 12 minutes in there is a situation where he 3-bet/folds AK against a 4-bet at $2/$4 6-max.
Seeing an awesome player (he plays $10/$20 and up) lay down AK there definitely reinforces the idea of being careful not to overplay the Big Slick.

This is a completely different thing, but I just looked at my all-in hands with AK the last couple months in tournament play and I'm winning 64% of them.

Question: The -15BB shove that you're reporting, that's your net loss, right?

And are we talking about hands where you get 4-bet and shove, or where you get 3-bet and 4-bet shove, or what?

The reason I ask is because if we're looking at hands where you have 3-bet, the other guy 4-bets and you shove, then your "baseline" isn't 0BB/100, it's -25BB/100 (or whatever amount of big blinds you have 3-bet to) meaning that the shove is still profitable, even if it shows a net loss.

I don't automatically ship it in with AK, but when the money goes in it's usually a function of realizing that I'll be behind when called but going for fold equity (folding out even if a bluffed T8o isn't bad when you have AK) and the fact that the pot is laying me good odds to call even if I'm behind his overall range.

I'll filter some and see what I come up with.

I filtered for this (in "More Filters" in HEM):

Allin preflop = true
BBs put In Preflop is Bigger Than... 70 (because how AK does versus shortstackers isn't really interesting for this discussion - or at least it should be separate)

Hole cards AKo, AKs, and stakes of 100NL and 200NL, and I get only 64 hands for last year (yeah, I don't play much): -688BB/100, or -7BB/shove. Which is well above the profitable level, but variance is huge for these things so sample size is obviously a problem. Flatting 3bets might well be more profitable in the right situations, but that's also something that'd require a large sample to accurately judge.

Meta game comes into play here too perhaps, but probably not much.

Weird. I was just playing in a tournament and reading this thread at the same time. I caught AK as my hole cards. I normally hate this hand. Whatever I do with it - raise big or flat call I lose 90 per cent of the time.
This time I called a raiser at 3 times the big blind. One other guy called too. Flop was 7, 7, King. Great, I thought. I've got top pair and the chances of anyone catching trip 7s are low. One guy raises, I go all in. He goes all in and the third guy goes all in. First guy has a pair of 10s. Second guy has King Jack suited (hearts) and of course he hits his flush draw. Yep, I really hate AK.

It includes any all-ins preflop, no matter how they happened. But in just about all cases it's either 4-bet (and then) call or 3-bet (and then) shove.

That's a pretty good point, I never thought of it. 3-bets are generally in the vicinity of 10 to 15 big blinds, so that would shift the EV of those shoves significantly.
We had already discussed that 4-bet/folding is not an option so once you've 4-bet, calling it off has gotta be +EV versus pretty much anyone.

Er. The "25 big blinds" thing I wrote was a screwup on my part. I'm playing mostly 1/2, so $25 is around what a standard 3-bet comes up to, hence the mistake. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm glad it didn't mess up my main point too much.

This is just silly. First, I really doubt you're losing 90% of the time with AK. Even a blind monkey is going to win with AK a lot. Second, because you held AK, you were way ahead when the money went in. The fact that you lost has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the hand. It's a bad beat but not a memorably bad one; I think you have just lost a lot of big hands at key moments with it, aren't playing it correctly, and are being superstitious and/or silly. KJs is going to hit his J or BD flush about 21% of the time there, but that's not AK's fault.

Big Slick off suite.

If one player has AK os and goes all in against a player with 89 suited.

Who has the best odds of winning?

AKo - 60.1%
89s - 39.9%

So 89s is a 3:2 dog.

As a gentle suggestion, you can do any of these type of calculations at http://www.cardschat.com/poker-odds-calculator.php

Er, not being 'silly', 'superstitious' or a 'blind monkey'. Just had a lot of bad experiences of playing Ace King. As to whether I'm playing it correctly, that's a moot point. How you play it depends on the circumstances and the players you're up against. It hasn't worked out for me. I'm glad it has for you.

Honestly.. I prefer AK suited over QQ.. You could hit an ace. or king, or a straight, or a flush.. queen can only hit another queen to beat those hands.. and that's unlikely.

If you shove all in AKs vs QQ with the queen not being in the suit of the AK then the AK with win about 46% of the time and the QQ about 54% so even though you might think it would be better to have the AK it is always better to have a pair preflop then two overcards. But in the short term it does not really make to much of a difference.

Yes you are being silly. You were a huge favorite to win a huge pot in the example you gave. The fact that you lost has nothing to do with it being Ace-King.